Attendees: TBD

Agenda:

1. Items to discuss with Councilmember (CD 10) Robert Jackson (W of Bway)

2. Bus Rapid Transit options

3. CB 12 Trans Committee Meeting (Feb 1st) preparation

4. Hudson River Valley Greenway Link

5. Feb. 27 Bronx Parks event, Lehman College

6. Date for February meeting

Report on CB 12 Traffic & Transportation Committee Meeting, 12-7-2009, 7 pm

Meeting was slightly more productive than November’s meeting because Josh, the DOT rep, was there.

1. Steve from Assemblyman Farrell’s office came in person to put forward a proposal to make 157th Street one way between Broadway and Morgan Place.

   1. Liz, from the main board, explained that a similar “quick-fix” change had been made 10 years ago and that it hadn’t solved the traffic problem.

   2. A resident argued against the change, saying that the street was used by through traffic from I-84 via the Macombs Dam Bridge to the Henry Hudson on-ramp at 158th Street. There was too much right-turning traffic already.

   3. The committee resolved to ask DOT to study traffic conditions on that block and on surrounding blocks.

2. DOT’s Safe Streets for Seniors program. Hillary Poole from DOT came to speak about her program. There are 25 areas around the city drawn from historical crash data. WH is in Phase I: 175th to Nagle, and Broadway to Audubon. Hamilton Hgts is in Phase II: W 145th to W 165th Streets, Broadway to St. Nicholas. Like most of these projects, DOT plans to make crossing streets easier for seniors. This includes pedestrian islands, longer crossing times, four-way reds, and neckdowns as well as fixing broken street infrastructure. Hillary asked for any problem intersections anywhere in the neighborhood: I added Jeremy’s proposed crosswalk on Bennett Ave in front of the 190th St A train station (just north of 192nd St, actually). Changes will take place in 2011-2012.

3. Josh from DOT updated the committee on plans to revise the intersection of W. 162nd, Amsterdam, and St. Nicholas. Apparently they are going to make St. Nicholas traffic dogleg around to improve traffic flow. There will be a workshop at the committee in February 2010.

4. Dyckman Greenway Connector: Josh says that they are working on finishing the Inwood/Sherman Creek traffic study first, so as to have new, fresh data on the traffic before making any changes. When that’s done, then they will have a workshop with stakeholders. Maybe in the spring.

5. PS 278 wants more crossing guards on 218th & Broadway, and to be included in schools with School Safety Routes.

6. TLC will add “livery taxi stands” on 187th between FWA and Cabrini, and 191st between Pinehurst and FWA. This should reduce the crowding of livery cabs.

7. Teachers from MS 324 and PS 8, among other schools at West 167th and Jumel Terrace, want assigned parking spaces. Josh said that wasn’t the plan of the Mayor’s office, and that schools with parking spaces had them as legacies.

8. DOT says that they can’t put in angle parking on West 170th west of Broadway in any shape or form; it’s too narrow, or there are too many grocery trucks, or something. No. Committee asked for clarification so they could help the neighborhood out by understanding how angle parking could be instituted.

9. There is a new traffic signal planned at Audubon and West 166th.

After attending two of these meetings, I see that the general method of this committee’s work is to get community input at the meetings, then to ask DOT to study the situation, then to look at the study before deciding what to recommend. This process takes a long time, as we can see from the months already spent on the Dyckman Greenway Connector. The committee does not want to act hastily, as they did with the previous inadequate solution to the traffic in the West 150s.

For us as an advocacy group, I think this means that we can’t expect a lot from the board. If we asked the board for a protected bike lane on Broadway from 155th to 218th Streets, they would pass it along to DOT to study, and DOT would come back in two or three years or however long it would take to do that kind of study, and only then would they consider supporting it.

The elephant in CB 12 is of course, the GWB and Trans-Manhattan Expressway. We need some kind of bridge tolls or congestion pricing to keep folks from using our neighborhood as a bridge on-ramp and to support better transit and parks in the area. DOT can do screenlines and traffic counts as if it was something immutable, like the fossil record, but in my opinion something should be done to reduce traffic now.

The one great thing about the transportation committee’s meetings is that everyone with a beef about transportation in the area ends up there. We could do a lot of good recruiting at the meetings because the people who show up to discuss their issues are already involved enough to go to a meeting and sit through an hour or so of other business. I think if we sat down as a group and thought through how we could come up with a broader message that would appeal to everyone who didn’t drive a car, not just cyclists, we could recruit many of the people who come to the meetings with safety issues or traffic issues. Perhaps we should also shift our monthly meetings to the same day as the committee, but earlier, so that we could all attend as a group.

We also discussed speeding on Dyckman Street west of Seaman Street and the lumpy asphalt on Broadway, particularly between West 207th Street and Isham Street.

Other agenda items included the feasibility of ferry service between Dyckman Street and lower Manhattan or Yonkers, the feasibility of residential parking on Jumel Terrace and its surrounding blocks (West 160th and West 162nd Streets and Sylvan Terrace), and the state of repair of the IRT stations at 157th, 168th, and 181st Streets.

Attending:  Maggie Clarke, Alex Cigale, Jonathan Rabinowtiz, Kathleen O’Sullivan, and new member, Joan Keener. 

We agreed the name of the organization should remain Inwood Livable Streets, that we would continue to welcome members from Inwood and other neighborhoods, and that our goals/projects would continue to be in Inwood and other neighborhoods to where we bicycle.  It would be fine to leave the website as Inwood and Washington Heights LIvable Streets.  We should figure a way to make those from Washington Heights feel welcome.

We agreed that we need to start meeting with decision-makers in government (e.g. Maurice, Holly Haff and/or Jon Orcutt at DOT and Commissioner Castro (we will try asking him for dates to meet). Then we can present our resolutions / petitions /goals and directly request action.

We focused on just a few of our long list of goals (which should find a special place on this site, as soon as we can figure out how to create a place for important changing documents like our goals and current status towards achieving each one, our accomplishments, bylaws (eventually), petitions, resolutions, minutes, etc.) 

Committees / Goals discussed

    MTA / Isham Nightmare (too many buses turning onto east Isham) - Kathleen mentioned that Good Sheperd Catholic school on Isham has a street closing to protect kids; need to get local school on eastern Isham involved.  Kathleen and Alex need another one or two volunteers.

   Repaving Broadway with concrete, Maggie suggested a few whereases for resolution - that Broadway is in awful shape, that there are 3 giant depots on upper Broadway that house many bus lines (Manhattan and Bronx), 4 Sanitation districts (and many trucks, plows, etc), and a subway depot, that we documented dozens of subway cars travel on Broadway to, several traversing Broadway as we were sitting there - all of these contribute greatly to Broadway’s current bad condition, that the Henry Hudson toll causes much additional traffic on Broadway in Inwood.  Maggie and Jonathan are looking for another one or two volunteers who are interested in this goal.

Street Trees task force - Joan is working with Partnerships for Parks academy to increase the care Inwood’s street trees get.  Joan would want more volunteers for this committee.

Designing an easy way to get from the Hudson greenway to the south GW bridge walkway. One way was extending and connecting very narrow path on the southbound off ramp from the bridge to a new bridge over the northbound Henry Hudson to mulched path to the bridge over Amtrak at the tennis courts.  We didn’t really go far with this one this time.

It’s really important to make sure that the stimulus money earmarked for the Ft. Washington to Inwood Park bridge over Amtrak be ramped while we still can.  Need to find the right person to talk to. Anyone want to hellp with this?

Assignments 

  Maggie Clarke - draft an Inwood Livable Streets brochure / flyer; put it on blog for comment. Should have a logo with design elements including bicycle(s), street/sidewalk, tree(s), pedestrian, (small) bus.

  Kathleen, Jonathan and Joan coauthor article for Manhattan Times on our goals, group, urging  people to join - again putting draft on blog for comment.

   Alex Cigale - draft a petition / resolution asking for Broadway roadway to be replaced with concrete.  We are looking for additional volunteers to get signatures for Sunday morning, July 26.

  Need volunteer to draft a logo and to figure out how to arrange our website so that we have our special documents in a special place.

Other Needs

Once we have flyers, we need to spread them around and get more active members.  Having T-shirts with the Inwood LIvable Streets and our logo will be useful when petitioning, doing cleanups or other public actions.  We need to establish our brand, get it out there.

In the future we will need to find a 501(c)3 organization to serve as our fiscal conduit so that we will be able to raise funds (for things like brochure/ flyer printing, and maybe even studies of traffic).

Please talk up the group with your friends and get them to join and become active.

Next Meeting - Third Wednesday of August - i.e. August 19.  At the RING garden (confluence of Dyckman, Broadway, Riverside, Seaman).  Since sunset is earlier and earlier, we might want to move the meeting earlier - 6:30 or 7?  

Streetsblog just alerted me to a new, useful feature: an online Google map of NYC bike racks. The map covers the city-installed racks, not ones provided by private owners. This is an excellent resource (that our tax dollars have provided for us) to figure out how to improve bike rack density.

I notice there are no racks by the 207th St A train station, nor are there racks on St. Nicholas by my 191st St 1 train station, nor on Dyckman and Nagle near the 1 train there.

I guess we could bring this up with DOT, or maybe reach out to business owners to see if they would support bike racks. Maybe one in front of the supermarket on Broadway and Dyckman? Or in front of the basketball courts on Nagle?

Here’s the link to the forms:  http://mbpo.org/free_details.asp?id=64

http://galapagosartspace.com/events.html 

Transportation Alternatives has announced three winners for “Designing the 21st Century Street,” an open design competition that challenged New Yorkers to safely accommodate pedestrians, bicyclists, transit, trucks and cars on the same “complete street” – something that has long eluded New York City street design. The winning entries, “Shared Space” by Steven Nutter, “Streets for Everyone” by Rogers Marvel Architects, and “Streets Come Alive” by LEVON, are remarkable for their ingenuity, invention and beauty. Come celebrate the winners and their innovative street designs at Galapagos Art Space. Visit http://www.transalt.org

Thank you Ms. Clarke. If the group wishes to file a formal complaint they can do so by writing to the 34th Precinct Community Council by e-mail or letter.

My Precinct Council email is President@34precinct.org

Once I receive the complaint I will and can follow up with the complainant. They are also more than welcome to attend our upcoming 34th Precinct Community Council meeting on November 19, 2008 at 7:30pm, Location-TBA.

George

George Espinal <mngovt@yahoo.com>